Mumbai Journal: Tips for Wannabe Entrepreneurs

Last year, Mumbai even featured in a PriceWaterhouseCoopers survey of the 26 best cities for business opportunity, livability and innovation . Shown, the Gateway of India in Mumbai.

If you decide to strike out on your own, Mumbai is usually an entrepreneur’s first port of call within India. Because even with our shoddy infrastructure, poor wages and astronomical rental rates, the city has certain advantages: a readily available network of resources, target groups aplenty, access to capital and the ever present dream that you could be the next Dhirubhai Ambani.

Last year, Mumbai even featured in a PriceWaterhouseCoopers survey of the 26 best cities for business opportunity, livability and innovation (albeit in last place.)

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But if you do decide to take the plunge, it’s inevitable that you’ll find yourself up against a never-ending and illogical list of obstacles (try registering a company name and you’ll see what I mean.) How then do people do it? Herewith, input and advice gathered from local entrepreneurs on how to make it in Mumbai:

Don’t be afraid to share. One of the biggest problems of owning and operating a business in Mumbai is finding office space at a reasonable rate. If you’re incorporating your company, you’ll need to provide the Registrar of Companies with an address. If you’d rather not give your home address, the likes of Regus and DBS provide “virtual” spaces with mailboxes and phone lines for a nominal monthly fee.

If you absolutely need a physical space to operate from, then consider co-working hubs. Bombay Connect, for example, not only provides desks for rent — along with wi-fi and access to a conference room, library plus courier and business center services — for as little as 1,250 rupees ($22) a month, but also access to a network of entrepreneurs and professionals who give talks, workshops, and offer advice and help for free.

“There was a company working there who does strategic innovation and I sent them a sponsor proposal for my business and they came back with loads of comments on how to make it more suitable for the local context,” says Elise Foster Vander Elst, who started her arts consultancy business last year and has since been operating out of Bombay Connect’s Bandra space. SumHR, a software start-up, recently began sharing its Andheri office space with other start-ups, where you can rent a desk for 5,000 rupees a month.

Don’t quit your day job… yet. For many budding entrepreneurs, the prospect of giving up a fixed monthly paycheck isn’t an option. Instead, they advocate starting your venture on the side, until you can prove its viability as a full-time career. The founder of The Indian Bean, an online retailer of single-estate coffee beans, says he holds down a full-time job at an advertising agency to pay his bills. “It doesn’t feel like work and it gets me excited,” he says of his start-up. “I work weekends and late night but it’s not that tough. What is tough is getting paperwork done because there are a lot of people for a lot of things.”

Alex, the co-founder of an online clothing start-up, who moved to Mumbai from Kerala, similarly works full-time at an IT services company. He says he started Bombayshirts.com, together with a business school friend, because he doesn’t know “if I can continue on a salary job forever.” He says Mumbai’s access to capital – through investors, venture capitalists and private equity firms – makes the process of scaling up that much easier. “That’s not necessarily the case in Bangalore or Hyderabad.”

Let the glass always be half-full. Many entrepreneurs say that when they are faced with a challenge – such as high operating costs – they simply flipped it on its head. Talvinder Singh, the founder of Tushky.com, a company that provides experiences like camping and adventure sports, says he could have easily saved costs by starting his company in Bangalore or New Delhi. Instead, realizing that Mumbai would provide him with the perfect target audience, he moved his family to an outer suburb to lower his living costs. “If you have 100,000 rupees of capital and have to start in Mumbai, you really need to think about how to reduce costs. That is a blessing in disguise and something I’ve learned well.”

Similarly, when the founder of The Indian Bean couldn’t open a bank account with a multi-national bank, he turned instead to a smaller, local bank. “They were a lot more patient with me,” he says. “Try to use local resources, and build anything within that community, even if you start slow.” Rather than going to the big coffee shop chains, he focused instead on local coffee shops, which were more receptive about stocking his product. “Working with local players helps a lot as they have a greater sense of community.”

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